


Come With Me to Calvary

by BrennanSpeaks



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 06:13:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30118371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrennanSpeaks/pseuds/BrennanSpeaks
Summary: On the pillars outside Santa Barbara, Abby hallucinates the last person she wants to see.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	Come With Me to Calvary

When they haul her up onto the pillar, Abby doesn't bother to save her strength. What would be the point? She screams and struggles and hurls profanities while they jeer and mock. She doesn't care. Facing death stoically never made anyone any less dead. And she was so close - so _fucking_ close to making it out. All she can do now is hope that Lev makes it - that he runs and doesn't look back like she fucking told him and doesn't get himself killed trying to come back for her.

All too soon, they leave her alone, with only the harsh sunlight and the sound of the carrion crows. More than a dozen others are hanging from the pillars around her, but not one of them is still breathing. Some have been stripped down to bones already. The smell almost makes her retch, but she locks her jaw and holds on to what little liquid is still in her stomach. When the nausea passes, she pants for breath and listens to the sound of the ocean waves and the birds squabbling over the remains of her fellows and tries not to think at all. Her arms are aching already, and she knows that'll get worse. Her throat is parched and the sun is relentless, burning and blistering her neck and shoulders, leaving her clothes and hair salt-stiff, beating down until her head swims.

She's pretty sure it's the heat that first summons him. Her vision is hazy and wavering, but the stupid, foolish optimist in her can't stop scanning the shoreline and the horizon and the grisly scene around her, looking for some kind of chance. Anything. Her vision blurs, her head aches sharply, and then she sees him, standing at the base of her pillar and looking up at her. He's still dressed for a mountain snowstorm and he pays no heed to the brutal sun. His face is craggy but whole - not shattered and lacerated the way that she left it. His expression is unreadable, but when she meets his eyes, he doesn't look away.

She licks dry lips with a dry tongue. "What the fuck are _you_ doing here?"

The words barely scrape past her parched throat, but he seems to understand them perfectly. He shrugs one shoulder. "You tell me."

Fair enough. Abby's not so far gone that she doesn't know a hallucination when she sees one. She bares her teeth after a moment, in a mockery of a smile. "You must be fucking loving this."

His face tightens a little. "Not as much as you'd think."

"Bullshit."

"That was always more your thing than mine."

There's so much fucking self-assurance in his voice. It grates against her. She knows he's not really here - that he's long since rotted to bones in his grave - but she still can't stomach the thought that even the memory of him could still be here, watching and judging and lording his final victory over her. She snarls with all the heat she can muster. "You expect me to believe you're not getting even a _little_ satisfaction out of seeing me like this? I would in your shoes. I _did,_ actually _._ "

He actually laughs softly. "That so? Lying to me is one thing, girl, but are you really gonna hang there and jus' keep lying to _yourself_?"

She swallows, remembering the splatter of blood across frost-rimed windows. Her heart racing and her palms sweating as if she was fighting for her life. The cries and the screams and above all else the feeling of _emptiness_ that deepened with every blow, leaving her drowning and desperate. She keeps her face hard. "What do you want, a fucking apology?"

He snorts. "No. I ain't here to forgive you."

"Then why the fuck are you here? Of all the dead people I could be hallucinating right now, why does it have to be you?"

"Maybe I'm the one you _want_ to see. Or, maybe you just can't run away from me anymore."

She takes a sharp breath. "I never ran away."

"Bullshit. Whether you were lookin' for vengeance or lookin' to justify it or even just lookin' for the light, you never could face me."

She clenches her fists, though it makes the rope cut even deeper into her abraded wrists. "You don't matter," she whispers, "You're one more corpse in this bone yard, and I don't give a _fuck_ what happened to you." 

She can feel her strength fading, her vision swimming, the pounding in her head getting worse, but it's not quite enough to drown out his laugh. "Yeah. Keep tellin' yourself that."

Black spots creep in from the edges of her vision. "Not going away, are you?"

"Guess not."

She shakes her head, then slowly lets it drop. "Okay. I get it." A bitter smile tugs at her cracked lips. "I don't get to _rush_ this."

The world fades out.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

She wakes well after sundown with the sea breeze tugging at her clothes. She opens her eyes and stares out. If she cranes her neck, she can just glimpse the ocean on the other side of that bluff, with moonbeams glinting off of it. She takes a slow breath that makes her ribs creak and her lungs ache sharply. There's a breeze coming in off the water, wicking away the smell of corpses and replacing it with something crisp and salty and living. She can't really feel her hands anymore, but maybe that's for the best. She swallows past the sandpaper in her throat and lifts her head.

He's still there, still watching her with an inscrutable expression that feels like judgment and satisfaction and sympathy all rolled into one. He's sitting perched on the footrest of an empty pillar with his feet dangling. The night wind ruffles his hair. She stares at him, meeting his gaze for long moments. She can't find it in her to fight with him now. Maybe she's just too tired - too broken - for that kind of rage. All the same, she can't take this . . . silence between them. It feels too empty.

"Does it matter," she whispers, "That I tried to do the right thing? For your brother? For the girl? Does it even matter that I let them live?"

He sighs. "'Course it matters," he says gruffly, "It just don't change anything."

She shakes her head, remembering Manny's blood drying on her face. Owen's eyes fixed and staring. "It changed everything."

His lips tighten. "What were you expectin'? That they'd be grateful? Would you be?"

She draws a breath and grunts at the pain that lances through her chest. "Just . . . thought it might balance the scales a little. But, I guess I still got what I deserved."

"Ain't about scales." His voice is oddly soft. Gentle, almost. "You know that. Nobody gets what they deserve."

Her lip curls in a bitter sneer. "You fucking asshole. I lost everything, and you're not even gonna let me find a little justice in that?"

He shakes his head. "You don't know real loss. Not yet."

Her breath hisses out once, then twice. "How can you say that?" she whispers. She stares down at him, knowing there's nothing left of her but scarred skin and pain. She yanks down on the rope so hard that her shoulders scream and blood trickles down her forearms. "How _the fuck_ can you say that?!" Yelling feels like ripping her chest apart, but she can't help herself. She doubles over, coughing.

He just keeps staring at her. His face isn't angry or gleeful or even satisfied. He just seems old and deeply sad. "There's one more thing."

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

It's early in the morning when they crucify Lev. When Abby sees the Rattlers emerge from the trees with a small, limp form hanging between them, she wants to believe it's another hallucination, but she knows better. Adrenaline dispels her growing wooziness. She screams and curses at them all over again, but she knows perfectly well how weak she sounds. They barely even react to her - just haul Lev up onto the empty pillar and trudge back up the hill, bitching all the while about having to put in extra hours on this shit detail.

In their wake, Lev groans. His head lolls from side to side. Abby pants for breath and tries to force her voice to be steady – to be _strong._ “Lev. _Lev!_ ”

His eyes flutter open. “Abby . . .” It’s the tone of a child seeking comfort after a nightmare, but his eyes are a thousand years old. “I’m sorry.”

Abby’s jaw tightens. She swallows past the knife in her throat. “Don’t.”

“I thought I could sneak past . . . they caught me in the outer perimeter. It was . . . sloppy. Stupid.”

“ _Lev._ ” She shakes her head. “Don’t do that, okay? It’s not your fault.”

“I should’ve . . .”

“ _No._ It’s not your fault. I am so fucking proud of you . . .” Her voice gives out and she has to pant again, gritting her teeth at the pain lancing through her chest at every breath.

Lev lifts his head. “After,” he whispers, “Do you think Yara will be there?”

She shakes her head again. “Don’t talk like that. We’re getting out of here, okay?”

“Are we?”

“Lev . . .”

“I’m sorry. I’m not like you, Abby. I need to ask.”

His body is sagging, his voice fading. Abby’s hands clench into fists. “Hey! You stay with me! We’re gonna get out of this!”

His eyes drift shut and his voice lowers to a whisper. “May the current be calm . . .” The words are almost lost in the rumble of the waves.

Abby wants to scream and rage and plead with him, but she can’t bring herself to do it. At best, he won’t hear. At worst, she’ll only make this harder on Lev than she already has. Her body sags. Her head drops almost to her chest.

“Do you understand, now?”

It’s _him_ again. That fucking old man. She lifts her head, then looks away. She thought she was too dehydrated to cry, but the haze over her vision says otherwise. “Don’t . . . don’t tell me there’s a goddamn _lesson_ in this.” 

She blinks until her eyes clear, then makes herself look at him. He’s standing at the base of Lev’s pillar and looking up at him. His expression is familiar. It’s the same look he gave the girl at the end – the one that’s ambushed Abby in her nightmares a thousand times since. Only, now she can put a word to the emotions that she sees there. Sorrow. Regret. Love. And, she knows that’s her own face reflected back at her. After a moment, he meets her gaze. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do – any _world_ you wouldn’t burn – if it would get him out of here safe?”

She swallows. There it is – the truth she’s been hiding from since she first glimpsed it in her father’s office. The truth that killed Jerry Anderson and Joel Miller – that’s killed so many since. 

Human nature.

There’s no point in running – no point in _lying._ “No,” she whispers.

He looks at her. His face is painfully gentle. “And if you got your miracle,” he says softly, “If he was safe and well and whole . . . is there anything that _anybody_ could do to you that could make you regret it? Is there any consequence . . . any price that’d be too high to pay?”

“No.”

“You’d pay it.” He pauses, staring up at her. “An’ if you were smart . . . you wouldn’t waste a single second on hating the person who came to collect.”

Abby closes her eyes. “I thought you weren’t here to forgive me?”

“I’m not.” His brow furrows, then relaxes. “You’ve gotta do that for yourself.”

She bows her head and lingers, for a moment, on the shame that hounds her. Maybe she can be free of it, if only here, at the end. Maybe there’s peace in this world, even for her. If that’s the only light in this darkness, then she’ll take what she can get. Her head is swimming again.

She sinks into the current and lets go.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Fog rolls in before sundown, cloaking the beach in eerie gray. By now, Abby’s not sure if the mist is real or just a figment of her failing mind. Lev hasn’t stirred in hours, though his chest still rises and falls. Soon, Abby won’t be able to check anymore. She’s losing the strength to even lift her head.

She drifts in and out of consciousness, but somehow the old man’s voice reaches her, even still.

“The pain fades.” His words are soft. “The fear, too. It all jus’ . . . stops mattering.”

She can’t find it in her to resent or even regret his presence. He’s not haunting her anymore. 

He’s company.

Her voice is weak – somewhere between a mumble and a rasp. It shouldn’t be recognizable as speech, but she knows he’ll understand her. “Are . . . are you going to stay?”

“Yeah. Until the end.” She lifts her head an inch – just enough to see that he can still look her in the eye. He gives her a firm nod. “This part’s easier if you ain’t gotta do it alone.”

Her eyes close and her whole body sags. “Help me,” she whispers, “Please . . .”

Some instinct she can’t explain makes her lift her head and open her eyes one more time. He’s gone. In his place stands a blood-spattered girl wearing an expression that’s frozen by suffering. An angel of death. Her miracle or her consequence, or maybe both.

“It’s you . . .”

Abby gives up on anger and shame and grief. She bows her head and waits for what comes next.

Whatever that might be.

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all feedback is welcomed and appreciated.
> 
> As a side note, I guess I now like Abby enough to put her at the center of a whump fic. Congratulations, Abs?
> 
> And for those who are wondering, yes, I am still working on my WIP. This is a side project that has been bugging me for a while, and I needed to get it out into the world.


End file.
